Chrysler owned AMC/Jeep at the time. There are court precedents due to the Indiana Atty Gen'l that take bond holders back to the front of the line after that little "iffy" settlement. Turns out that they stripped the pensions from the non-union workers in that "negotiation".

"Heflin built a political career as an unremitting opponent of equal rights for black Americans, women, and Roman Catholics.
In 1908, while a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he had shot and seriously wounded a black man who confronted him on a Washington streetcar. Although indicted, Heflin succeeded in having the charges dismissed. In subsequent home-state campaigns, he cited that shooting as one of his major career accomplishments.

"While firmly against giving the vote to women, Heflin believed they would be grateful for his role in establishing Mother's Day as a national holiday."

Another geat pieces Clarice. One addition is the 20% of North Carolina Dems who voted "no preference". Forget the LGBT caucus, what about those gray, neutral, non-commited people of doubt. Talk about a target rich environment.

"For these reasons, Obama cannot stand by and allow any state, particularly Arizona -- which serves as an entryway for illegal immigrants -- to interfere with the flow of immigrants into the U.S. and Democrat-controlled cities."

Great pieces, Clarice, Rush was replying Lugar's whine, still very much like Bennett
and Castle, with some nuance,

you know it struck me how little his base really demands of the Democrats, how there was no followup in Robin's question, their version of the Tea Party, OWS, advertised like the Avengers, turns out to be more like Loki's minions,

Terrific Pieces, Clarice. Daddy, "Cotton Tom" Heflin was also the uncle of the more sensible Howell Heflin, who had one of the better lines about Ted Kennedy: (From Wiki)

Upon seeing photos in the National Enquirer showing U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy copulating with an unknown woman on the deck of Kennedy's boat, he was said to have noted that he was glad Senator Kennedy had "changed his position on offshore drilling."

"THUMBS DOWN: To Arlington Public Schools officials, for allowing local students to be used as props in President Obama’s re-election effort."

and this about Rep. Jim "I'm going to earmark the shit out of it" Moran -

"THUMBS DOWN: To the leadership of the Democratic Party in the 8th Congressional District, which seems to be going to extreme lengths to trivialize the challenge by Bruce Shuttleworth to U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-8th) in the June 12 primary."

"Shuttleworth appears to be a legitimate, credible candidate, and it is very unusual that half of a candidate’s petition signatures would be disqualified. Democratic Party of Virginia Chairman Brian Moran – Jim Moran’s brother – is named in the lawsuit.

Did Moran and his friends in the 8th District Democratic Committee try to smother a legitimate primary challenger? This will get very interesting…"

Although Moran hasn't uttered the word "macaca", you'd think this could be a big WaPo story about political corruption.

If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.

I have no idea if that's true. I also have no idea where Reuters came up with that number because the article makes no reference to the poll it used to make such a claim. I looked for the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, but it contains no data concerning veterans,at least in the released for public consumption version. And that poll has Obama up 49-42 over Romney,so the 7 point veteran lead is not "higher than his margin in the general population."

Ah, never mind. We can surely trust Reuters. They would never twist some numbers to advance a preferred meme. They're professionals.

Forget the birther nonsense, etc. Former Intelligence Committee staffer and author Angelo Codevilla establishes that Obama grew up in a world deeply influenced by the CIA, among other establishment institutions. The key here is his life in Indonesia. Did you know his mother's supervisor was one Peter Geithner? The lead-in to this:

Consistent with the Barack Obama we know, however, are his real family, his real upbringing, and his real choices of profession and associates. His mother's parents, who raised him, seem to have been cogs in the U.S. government's well-heeled, well-connected machine for influencing the world, whether openly ("gray influence") or covertly ("black operations"). His mother spent her life and marriages, and birthed her children, working in that machine. For paradigms of young Barack's demeanor, proclivities, opinions, language, and attitudes one need look no further than the persons who ran the institutions that his mother and grandparents served--e.g., the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency--as well as his chosen mentors and colleagues. It is here, with these people and institutions, that one should begin to unravel the unknowns surrounding him.

At the very least one can conclude that far from being on the outs, young Obama was always part of a segment of this country's ruling elite.

A rare misfire on Angelo's part, Stanley Ann was more often then not, dissafected when she
was at the embassy in Jakarta, and she likely
imparted that notion to her son, Barack Sr,
was on the outs, because he was more radical,
that Kenyatta's faction was willing to go.

Just 23% have a favorable opinion of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Twenty-nine percent (29%) say the same about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gets positive reviews from 33% and House Speaker John Boehner from 36%. All four have higher negatives than positives.

So if Democrats and Republicans are roughly equal in the population, dont you think the Indys are making a conscience decision about the Democrat leaders versus the Republicans one? Cuz I do.

Ipsos is a Canadian polling outfit, and quite reliably liberal leaning in their poll design, question wording and demographics used for a poll. Not particularly accurate historically either. Since any poll suffers the possibility of it being not representative of the population, hence the confidence level being less than 100%, I would totally ignor this one as I know of no other poll with similar results.

The guys who went through OCS with TMax, would not yield a similar result I can assure you from my chats with many of them.

Why would needlessly kill so many plants, Rick, btw, Rodriguez's 'Hared Measures' is a good read, like Felix a generation ago, he's been to all the places, the liberals were verklempt about, El Salvador, Panama, and unlike their darling Glenn Carle, wasn't so self indulgent, about his place in the universe. He's a little more lenient on the Bobbsey backstabbers, Sulick and Kappes, but
the former did stuck up for him,

One of these days I will take some time and up-date everyone on what the old man is doing. I am staying out of trouble but sometimes that is diffucult to do..

Retruning home tomorrow after a weekend with what USE to be a dieheart "LIB" brother whose wife told me yesterday that he was voting "R" and she was currently undecided..She had been a Hilary supporter..and this comes from Arkansas..in my tour of lower Mo. I think the "O" would lose by landslide..

The position still isn't covered, and the number is going to get far, far larger. The downgrade is a nice "kick 'em while they're down" touch. It requires them to put up almost $1 Billion more in collateral for their daily trade book that would be otherwise allocated. Say, like lending to a hedge fund whom might be long crude and was forced to liquidate the trade last week.

Anybody notice the fall off in crude and other commodities in the aftermath of this? Grains were different, I admit, because there was a real crop report on Thursday.

I usually like what he writes and this is no exception. I quibble with him on the systemic risk, simply because, for me at least, if it's at all interconnected then it's systemic. It doesn't have to take the system down to be systemic.

Thanks for that Emery link, C; I'm glad for the wimmenz we have on our side, present company included of course.

Btw, have the rest of you been bombarded with gross out anti smoking commercials courtesy of the government? And are the rest of you as pissed off about having to endure them as I am (and I'm sure Janet is)? You know what else can lead to horribly disfiguring death? AIDS.

In searching for my next stand alone piece, on the Silvaesque plot, and the subsequent
foulup, we find at least two of the infinite monkeys writing Hamlet, Riedel and Soufan, missing the point, in this piece earlier in the week;

Btw, have the rest of you been bombarded with gross out anti smoking commercials courtesy of the government?

Yes, yes, yes! Even on rented movies from Redbox. All the smokers in those ads should have their pictures up in school entry halls...with a giant "Thank You For Funding Our Schools" banner draped above them.

there is this - "He describes a scene in which she told him that she intended to marry Lolo Soetoro and that, after the marriage, they would all live in Indonesia. As Obama recalls it, he turned to her and asked, “But do you love him?” — a question that made her chin tremble. It was, at the least, precocious. At the time he was only 31 / 2."

I thought he was 6...anyway, you could either describe it as precocious or a damn made-up lie!

It won't be nearly as controversial as Time magazine's breastfeeding cover, but Newsweek's May 21 issue declares Barack Obama the country's "first gay president." The accompanying cover story was written by Andrew Sullivan, the popular--and openly gay--political blogger. The magazine even gives the commander-in-chief a rainbow halo. Sullivan's cover story is not yet online, but in a blog post published earlier this week, Sullivan wrote that Obama's support of gay marriage brought him to tears: I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is.

Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), the two most vulnerable Democratic senators, have declined to endorse Obama’s call for the legalization of gay marriage.

Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), Democrats who have easier races but in states that could become more competitive by November, have also backed away from Obama’s stance.

They all represent states with constitutional amendments or laws banning same-sex marriage.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicted Thursday the Democratic Party would adopt a pro-gay marriage plank in its platform. While that may happen when delegates to the Democratic National Convention meet September in Charlotte, N.C., the party remains divided.

Accomapnying Clarice in the Am Thinker this morning Abraham Miller has some pithy points to make:

The Chronicle fired Naomi Schaefer Riley for revealing what almost everyone on any campus knows, but is reluctant to say, about black studies: it is a political cause masquerading as an academic discipline, and if there were real intellectual, and not political, standards on campus, it would be shut down.

There is, however, a larger issue: not only is what Schaefer Riley says true about why black studies should be closed down, but her statements could also be easily extended to many fields in the social sciences and humanities. The vulnerability of the campus on this issue is why the Chronicle chose the unseemly and totally inappropriate device of censorship. It was so willing to placate its audience of ideological leftists massing with pitchforks in hand that it inadvertently gave Riley's exposé on black studies far and away more visibility than it would otherwise have achieved.

For a higher education periodical to substitute censorship for debate speaks volumes about the deterioration of the entire educational edifice. In order for this failing institution to persist, its reality must be hidden from the larger public. Large segments of higher education are not education at all, but an expensive immersion in leftist propaganda for the attainment of a degree that is as worthless as all the multicultural requirements coerced on a captive and overly passive audience of students.

A large part of academia is a bubble, and like early warnings about the housing crisis, few in academia want to acknowledge that the bubble is about to burst. In academia, as in the world of investment banking, no one wants to kill the golden goose. Too many have such strong and vested interests in the system as it exists that they have no motivation to consider the long-term consequences.

Thos Humanities classes I was forced to endure were absolutely a joke. Getting a bachelors degree in psychology qualifies you to flip burgers, you must have at least a master's degree to be employed in the field although the degrees are more about holding down competition, not imparting any great knowledge.